This Month in Social Media: January 2017

The world of social media is constantly changing — and with so many platforms and algorithms out there, it’s hard to keep up. That’s why we provide our clients and followers with This Month in Social — where we highlight the biggest changes in social media and how we prepare to tackle them.

Instagram Brings Business Insights and Ads to Stories

In the coming weeks, Instagram will be adding full screen advertisements and new insights within Instagram Business Tools for its stories feature.

What this means for businesses: We know the perks of insights (the best way to understand what content resonates best with your audience), but the decision to bring ads to Instagram Stories is a sure indication of the five month old platform’s success. As Instagram points out, “ads in stories will let you use targeting, reach and measurement capabilities that make your ads personally relevant to the people you want to reach — which is unmatched in a stories experience today.”

Twitter to Shut Down its Dashboard App

Pour one out: On February 3rd, Twitter is calling it quits on Dashboard, its all-in-one management suite for businesses launched earlier this summer.

What this means for businesses: Not much —  Dashboard really never took off in the first place as many third party tools (like Hootsuite, Buffer, Falcon, etc.) already allow for scheduling content and drafting posts. However, if you did rely on Dashboard, the team is hoping to bring “the best features from Dashboard to the broader Twitter community.” And like everything in social media, time will tell if they succeed.

Facebook Continues to Improve the Facebook Live Experience

Yesterday, Facebook announced a number of new tools and improvements to its Live feature: Users will soon be able to go live from the web, assign a “Live Contributor” role to individuals in Pages, access video insights for profiles with 5k or more followers, pin comments to the bottom of a live broadcast, share a video permalink for Pages, and take advantage of crossposting features!

What this means for businesses: While these tools are aimed at its Journalism Project, brands can certainly take advantage as well! Upgrades like these can help Facebook become a true TV rival, if and when that time comes — brands may need to reconsider where they are spending their ad dollars.

Snapchat Testing New Ad Features

Snapchat has been steadily rolling out new advertising formats to marketers, but its recent features may be the most marketer-friendly yet. According to Adweek, Snapchat is testing deep links within ads to send viewers out of the platform and into a new app (like a product page on an e-commerce app) as well as an auto-fill feature to allow viewers to fill out lead-generation forms with one tap on the screen!

What this means for businesses: Getting consumers to fill out their personal information has always been a challenge — couple that with small screens or keyboards on your smartphone and it’s even harder. With a tap to fill option, perhaps certain brands aimed at the Snapchat demographic will steer more towards Snap Ads this year.

Do you have any questions regarding the above changes and updates? Reach out to one of Ferocious Media’s Social Media Analysts today!

To learn more about our Social Media Marketing Campaigns as well as other services that we offer, explore our website or contact us today!